Re: A few GPON questions...

[Jared Mauch]

I have tested a variety of equipment as part of my FTTH enterprise. Active 
Ethernet is where I’m still sitting because I’m not quite happy with some of 
the PON hardware out there personally. 

Yes active solutions provide more flexibility in one area but they are only 
viable in dense environments where the cost to build is already high and the 
fiber count is cheap comparably. 

If you are within the b+ optics link budget there are options, but if you are 
spliced at your splitters any migration may be tricky. 

I’ve been doing 2F drop to the home so I can later to technology migration as 
the cost variance is about 7c for 1F vs 10c/ft for 2F. It’s a bit more as those 
drops are the longer portion vs the backbone legs, but I can change from active 
to GPON or back without trouble. 

It sounds like you have a typical vendor management problem where the equipment 
isn’t meeting your needs. Find a way to migrate to something else. Hopefully 
you have spare plant and budget to move to something else. If it’s homes, 
hopefully you can do a migration without coordination and entering the home, if 
it’s office campus see if you can DWDM or CWDM to get the capacity you need or 
there are other hardware like the UBNT OLT out there. A lot of the smaller FTTH 
types are also using the Huwaei hardware. Qualifying a vendor is hard and they 
change. I’ve spent decades working with my vendors trying to encourage them to 
do the right thing. The story you tell is a typical one of overworked employees 
without the power to fix the problems they see. 

As others said I would consider a change as your business risk may be too high. 
This is where network operation becomes business risk mitigation. 

- Jared 

Sent from my iCar

> On Dec 6, 2018, at 10:18 PM, Nick Bogle  wrote:
> 
> Hello fellow NANOG members :)
> 
> Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network 
> Engineer for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment 
> from phones to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a 
> contractor to design a GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving 
> measure (though I am not sure how successful that was). 
> 
> Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we have 
> gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability to 
> manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of our 
> equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are currently 
> using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream ONT models 
> (all Zhone).
> 
> -We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the linecards 
> to add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are too high). 
> Does anyone have experience with 3rd party vendors/compatibility/stability 
> issues? We were told they theoretically should work and just throw a log 
> event, but it hasn't been tested. If so, what vendors would you recommend? So 
> far all we've really seen are Ubiquiti and Fiberstore optics. 
> 
> -As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and ONT 
> vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say, Zhone 
> ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT? 
> I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia OLT's but 
> it's technically not supported. 
> 
> -We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced 1 
> line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were a 
> pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed 
> internal policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to 
> customers. Does anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and their 
> overall stability of components? 
> 
> - Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a 
> corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service 
> provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.  
> 
> Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you don't 
> want on the list. 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Nick Bogle
> n...@bogle.se

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Brandon Martin]

On 12/11/18 4:40 PM, Jameson, Daniel wrote:
I’ve used this guy a couple times,  Use your favorite switch/POE switch 
and viola PON network using switches.  Pretty sure it doesn’t work with 
Zhone… But Zhone is #88 in my list of PON vendor choices ;)


https://supportforums.adtran.com/docs/DOC-8697



My Adtran salesperson has told me on a few occasions that they don't 
recommend those things anymore and may even have discontinued them. 
Apparently they were never especially stable.  Of course, your mileage 
may vary.  I agree it would be an amazingly useful product if indeed it 
works well.


I've also been told that the EPON version they offer is fine, so who knows.
--
Brandon Martin

RE: A few GPON questions...

[Jameson, Daniel]

I’ve used this guy a couple times,  Use your favorite switch/POE switch and  
viola PON network using switches.  Pretty sure it doesn’t work with Zhone… But 
Zhone is #88 in my list of PON vendor choices ;)
https://supportforums.adtran.com/docs/DOC-8697


From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Ben Cannon
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 2:11 PM
To: Nick Bogle
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: A few GPON questions...

Rip it out.

Where are your splitters? You can probably fix this with PoE 8-port switches 
and UPS-es.

Every day you wait will cost more.

You will never get 25 years out of this, I predict 6mos and then you rip it 
completely and put in copper/IDFs.
-Ben

On Dec 11, 2018, at 1:04 PM, Nick Bogle mailto:n...@bogle.se>> 
wrote:
Unfortunately management didn't want an apple to apple comparison. They wanted 
a comparison to how it was spec'd out originally not how we typically deploy it 
now. I don't think this is a deal breaker for my job, we have 50+ buildings 
left to manage, and our contractor is responsible for maintaining it for the 
most part for the next year at minimum. The previous management (CIO/CTO/their 
assistants) were pretty much fired over this fiasco. New management is much 
better to deal with.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 12:35 PM Alfie Pates 
mailto:alfie@fdx.services>> wrote:
>The cost analysis was already done.

>Costs were not factored in for BBUs on every ONT like should have been spec'd 
>out for emergency phone lines.

These two things do not quite agree.

Update your CV - It is not your responsibility to shoulder the stress of your 
superiors' bad decisions, especially if you have no room to learn from those 
mistakes.


~a

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Aled Morris via NANOG]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 at 21:16, Tony Wicks  wrote:
>
> I remember working for this little company called EDS... Some bright spark 
> decided that ATM to the desktop was the future (not this ethernet (or even 
> token ring) thing) and subsequently converted several thousand head office 
> machines to E3 or OC3 to the desktop. Hell of a thing trying to make OS2 
> drivers work for an OC3 card. That went very badly and the whole lot was 
> ripped out again after a couple of years from memory.

Same thing happened in BA's shiny new office block near Heathrow back
in the 90's.  ATM25 to the desktop and LANE.  Total disaster.
Allegedly.

Aled

RE: A few GPON questions...

[Tony Wicks]

I remember working for this little company called EDS... Some bright spark 
decided that ATM to the desktop was the future (not this ethernet (or even 
token ring) thing) and subsequently converted several thousand head office 
machines to E3 or OC3 to the desktop. Hell of a thing trying to make OS2 
drivers work for an OC3 card. That went very badly and the whole lot was ripped 
out again after a couple of years from memory.

-Original Message-
From: NANOG  On Behalf Of Seth Mattinen
Sent: Wednesday, 12 December 2018 9:59 AM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: A few GPON questions...


I've had jobs where management refused to consult with or consider suggestions 
from IT. I once was part of an office move where the modular furniture vendor 
started asking questions about cabling was entering and port locations blah 
blah. They were told by management they don't need to know that and IT will 
just figure it out later. The vendor was like no way, they need to be involved 
now or we won't proceed. Then IT was brought in at the last minute, but if the 
furniture vendor hadn't refused to proceed the plan was literally F the IT guys 
and make them figure it out all the cabling over the weekend before everyone 
was to move in. Management like that just gets worse until you line up another 
job and quit.

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Ben Cannon]

Rip it out.  

Where are your splitters? You can probably fix this with PoE 8-port switches 
and UPS-es.   

Every day you wait will cost more.

You will never get 25 years out of this, I predict 6mos and then you rip it 
completely and put in copper/IDFs.

-Ben

> On Dec 11, 2018, at 1:04 PM, Nick Bogle  wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately management didn't want an apple to apple comparison. They 
> wanted a comparison to how it was spec'd out originally not how we typically 
> deploy it now. I don't think this is a deal breaker for my job, we have 50+ 
> buildings left to manage, and our contractor is responsible for maintaining 
> it for the most part for the next year at minimum. The previous management 
> (CIO/CTO/their assistants) were pretty much fired over this fiasco. New 
> management is much better to deal with.
> 
>> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 12:35 PM Alfie Pates  wrote:
>> >The cost analysis was already done.
>> 
>> >Costs were not factored in for BBUs on every ONT like should have been 
>> >spec'd out for emergency phone lines. 
>> 
>> These two things do not quite agree. 
>> 
>> Update your CV - It is not your responsibility to shoulder the stress of 
>> your superiors' bad decisions, especially if you have no room to learn from 
>> those mistakes. 
>> 
>> 
>> ~a

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Nick Bogle]

Unfortunately management didn't want an apple to apple comparison. They
wanted a comparison to how it was spec'd out originally not how we
typically deploy it now. I don't think this is a deal breaker for my job,
we have 50+ buildings left to manage, and our contractor is responsible for
maintaining it for the most part for the next year at minimum. The previous
management (CIO/CTO/their assistants) were pretty much fired over this
fiasco. New management is much better to deal with.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 12:35 PM Alfie Pates  wrote:

> >The cost analysis was already done.
>
> >Costs were not factored in for BBUs on every ONT like should have been
> spec'd out for emergency phone lines.
>
> These two things do not quite agree.
>
> Update your CV - It is not your responsibility to shoulder the stress of
> your superiors' bad decisions, especially if you have no room to learn from
> those mistakes.
>
>
> ~a
>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Seth Mattinen]

On 12/11/18 12:32 PM, Alfie Pates wrote:

 >The cost analysis was already done.

 >Costs were not factored in for BBUs on every ONT like should have been 
spec'd out for emergency phone lines.


These two things do not quite agree.



I'm sure management did some kind of cost analysis, but ignored normal 
IT things like POE for things like phones and cameras. POE is super 
convenient in a LAN environment. But management doesn't know or usually 
care about that. I'd have asked the PON guys hey, what's your solution 
for POE delivery to powered devices? I bet factoring that in alone would 
have blown the PON cost up. I can't imagine doing anything as insane as 
PON in a LAN environment.


But everyone knows fiber is the best and you must eliminate all that 
silly copper, with helpful prodding from vendor sales. Could be sales 
didn't want IT involved because they knew IT will kill the deal, and 
some management will fall for that because these sales guys must be the 
experts. Problems later? The IT guy will deal with it.


I've had jobs where management refused to consult with or consider 
suggestions from IT. I once was part of an office move where the modular 
furniture vendor started asking questions about cabling was entering and 
port locations blah blah. They were told by management they don't need 
to know that and IT will just figure it out later. The vendor was like 
no way, they need to be involved now or we won't proceed. Then IT was 
brought in at the last minute, but if the furniture vendor hadn't 
refused to proceed the plan was literally F the IT guys and make them 
figure it out all the cabling over the weekend before everyone was to 
move in. Management like that just gets worse until you line up another 
job and quit.

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Rod Beck]

Fusion splicing 



From: NANOG  on behalf of Baldur Norddahl 

Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 7:19 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: A few GPON questions...



tir. 11. dec. 2018 19.03 skrev Ben Cannon mailto:b...@6by7.net>>:
Sure but I can fit quite a lot of fiber in very little space. eg an 864 is 
approx 1” dia.

Working with that much fiber is expensive. Too much work at each splice point. 
Huge inflexible cables. Expensive machinery to blow the fiber.

Compare that to blowing a 24f cable of 4 mm into a 6 mm id and 10 mmu od duct. 
You can carry 24 times 128 users on that. Much more than the 25 mm monster 
cable running p2p.

On top of that the multiduct has 12 of the smaller 10 mm subducts. You can blow 
additional cables as needed.

Granted I have only worked with outside plant delivering FTTH. But I don't see 
why not for a campus.

Regards
Baldur

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Ben Cannon]

We think it makes sense for cost reduction for semi rural or suburban aerial 
distribution- reducing the fiber count to like. 12. Reduces costs dramatically 
vs say a 288 count and all the splicing. (Ribbons are better)

-Ben

> On Dec 11, 2018, at 10:49 AM, Owen DeLong  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 11, 2018, at 10:01 , Ben Cannon  wrote:
>> 
>> Sure but I can fit quite a lot of fiber in very little space. eg an 864 is 
>> approx 1” dia.
>> 
>> Fan-outs can be done each floor, etc.  And a single single mode strand has 
>> prodigious bandwidth available with the right optics.
>> 
>> Bonus: if you did this 30 years ago, you’re still good.  Anything else 
>> (remember FDDI grade Multi-mode?) is not future proof IMO.  Basic 9/125 
>> Singlemode always will be.
>> 
>> In city wide deployments, a bit different, especially for eg residential 
>> service at economical pricing.  GPON for sure has it’s place, I just don’t 
>> personally feel it’s inside a building all else being equal.
> 
> I’d actually argue that even if you’re going to do GPON on a wide 
> distribution, the economics these days make a pretty good case for 
> future-proofing with home-run fiber and putting your splitters and GPON gear 
> in the same location. The link budgets turn out to be identical regardless of 
> how far upstream the splitter is and once you dig the trench, the cost of the 
> fiber itself is relatively cheap.
> 
> Home run means you aren’t locked into the PON topology if something better 
> comes along in the future. It also opens up the potential to support 
> competition (which I realize may be considered a detractor by some).
> 
> Owen
> 
>> 
>> - Ben Cannon, AS15206
>> 
>>> On Dec 11, 2018, at 9:24 AM, Jason Lixfeld  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 On Dec 11, 2018, at 11:32 AM, Ben Cannon  wrote:
 
 Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your 
 existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.
>>> 
>>> There’s only so much space in conduits, risers and ducts.  At some point, 
>>> scale would press this up against physical infrastructure realities 
>>> depending on how far the active gear at the head end is from the subscriber.
>> 
> 

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Alfie Pates]

>The cost analysis was already done.

>Costs were not factored in for BBUs on every ONT like should have been
>spec'd out for emergency phone lines.
These two things do not quite agree. 

Update your CV - It is not your responsibility to shoulder the stress of
your superiors' bad decisions, especially if you have no room to learn
from those mistakes.
~a

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Nick Bogle]

The cost analysis was already done. The cost is around 10% less. The
implications are there is no redundancy, lacking capacity, costs were not
factored in for BBUs on every ONT like should have been spec'd out for
emergency phone lines, etc. After that was done management said to suck it
up and make it work. Unfortunately we're beyond stuck with it at this point
as the second building is already under construction and the first
buildings grand opening is January 1st.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 12:04 PM William Herrin  wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 10:59 AM Nick Bogle  wrote:
> > That is correct. We are running SMF from our Datacenter to the end
> > users desk in the building and providing either in wall 4 port ONTs or
> > desktop 8-16 port ONTs. Everywhere there would be a traditional 3 port
> > CAT6 network jack there is a APC fiber jack and/or an in wall ONT.
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> Yikes! That's upside down even for PON. The P is for Passive. The
> whole idea is to not have powered infrastructure in inconvenient
> locations because that's expensive and super hard to reliably
> maintain.
>
> I think maybe you've found yourself in a "throwing good money after
> bad" situation. You have the LAN equivalent of motion sensor lighting
> in the restroom. Sounds great until you realize the maximum delay
> setting is 15 minutes... how many dark #2s before you have to bite the
> bullet and take it out?
>
> This is going to cost you cash and productivity for as long as you
> keep trying to make it work. Moreover, the combination of
> inflexibility and elevated incidence of outages will consume the
> occupants' productivity as well. There will never be a less expensive
> time to install a classic (copper) cabling infrastructure than before
> the building is occupied. This is where you dip in to the
> organization's contingency funds and take the political hit.
>
> And for the love of God, break the contract for the next building.
> Even if you have to pay it out and just lose the money, save yourself
> the expense of ever having to operate it. If they won't take your word
> for it, get an external networking company to do an impact and cost
> analysis so you can show the administration what they'll lose by
> continuing this folly.
>
> I'll bet your contractor had some questions they didn't want to
> answer. If I'd sold you this bill of goods there'd be questions I
> wouldn't want to answer too.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
>
>
> --
> William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
> Dirtside Systems . Web: 
>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 10:59 AM Nick Bogle  wrote:
> That is correct. We are running SMF from our Datacenter to the end
> users desk in the building and providing either in wall 4 port ONTs or
> desktop 8-16 port ONTs. Everywhere there would be a traditional 3 port
> CAT6 network jack there is a APC fiber jack and/or an in wall ONT.

Hi Nick,

Yikes! That's upside down even for PON. The P is for Passive. The
whole idea is to not have powered infrastructure in inconvenient
locations because that's expensive and super hard to reliably
maintain.

I think maybe you've found yourself in a "throwing good money after
bad" situation. You have the LAN equivalent of motion sensor lighting
in the restroom. Sounds great until you realize the maximum delay
setting is 15 minutes... how many dark #2s before you have to bite the
bullet and take it out?

This is going to cost you cash and productivity for as long as you
keep trying to make it work. Moreover, the combination of
inflexibility and elevated incidence of outages will consume the
occupants' productivity as well. There will never be a less expensive
time to install a classic (copper) cabling infrastructure than before
the building is occupied. This is where you dip in to the
organization's contingency funds and take the political hit.

And for the love of God, break the contract for the next building.
Even if you have to pay it out and just lose the money, save yourself
the expense of ever having to operate it. If they won't take your word
for it, get an external networking company to do an impact and cost
analysis so you can show the administration what they'll lose by
continuing this folly.

I'll bet your contractor had some questions they didn't want to
answer. If I'd sold you this bill of goods there'd be questions I
wouldn't want to answer too.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
Dirtside Systems . Web: 

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Nick Bogle]

Ceiling tiles. There is a special ceiling tile that drops down that
maintains our 24 port ONTs that do PoE+ to our Cisco WAPs. It's most
definitely isn't what I would have chosen to do.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 11:30 AM Alfie Pates  wrote:

> Campus network deployments are expensive, by their very nature. You are
> deploying a *lot* of capacity over a not-insignificant footprint.
>
> If your building has been constructed sans wiring closets, then I can
> forsee other issues in your future - Will you be deploying WiFi on site? If
> so, where do you intend to situate the Switches/ONTs+PoE injectors for
> those?
>
> I wouldn't put my name to this.
>
>
> ~A
>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Alfie Pates]

Campus network deployments are expensive, by their very nature. You are
deploying a *lot* of capacity over a not-insignificant footprint.
If your building has been constructed sans wiring closets, then I can
forsee other issues in your future - Will you be deploying WiFi on site?
If so, where do you intend to situate the Switches/ONTs+PoE injectors
for those?
I wouldn't put my name to this.

~A

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Nick Bogle]

I wish this was an option There isn't any budget for ripping out this
system and we are already contractually obliged to deploy GPON in another
building that will be coming online in 2-3 years. We've severed the
contract beyond that already.

That being said We have ~580 ONTs (remember, we are deploying fiber to
the user, not to the MDF. There is no network closet.) To deploy a Cisco
compact switch or something similar would cost ~1,000/ea plus $200 minimum
for third party optics, then to add a large enough fiber distribution
switch for that many ports would be astronomically expensive. It was a
poor desicion that will have to be maintained for the next ~25 years until
the next remodel thanks to our previous non technical administration
listening to the sales people over the previous network administration
team.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 8:32 AM Ben Cannon  wrote:

> Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your
> existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.
>
> -Ben. AS15206
>
> On Dec 6, 2018, at 7:18 PM, Nick Bogle  wrote:
>
> Hello fellow NANOG members :)
>
> Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network
> Engineer for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment
> from phones to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a
> contractor to design a GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving
> measure (though I am not sure how successful that was).
>
> Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we
> have gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability
> to manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of
> our equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are
> currently using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream
> ONT models (all Zhone).
>
> -We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the
> linecards to add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are
> too high). Does anyone have experience with 3rd party
> vendors/compatibility/stability issues? We were told they theoretically
> should work and just throw a log event, but it hasn't been tested. If so,
> what vendors would you recommend? So far all we've really seen are Ubiquiti
> and Fiberstore optics.
>
> -As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and
> ONT vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say,
> Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different
> model OLT? I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia
> OLT's but it's technically not supported.
>
> -We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced
> 1 line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were
> a pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed
> internal policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to
> customers. Does anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and
> their overall stability of components?
>
> - Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a
> corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service
> provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.
>
> Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you
> don't want on the list.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick Bogle
> n...@bogle.se
>
>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Nick Bogle]

Bill,

That is correct. We are running SMF from our Datacenter to the end users
desk in the building and providing either in wall 4 port ONTs or desktop
8-16 port ONTs. Everywhere there would be a traditional 3 port CAT6 network
jack there is a APC fiber jack and/or an in wall ONT.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 10:26 AM William Herrin  wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 7:44 AM Nick Bogle  wrote:
> > local university [...] we hired a contractor to design a GPON LAN system
> for a new building as a cost saving measure
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> Do I correctly understand that you're using GPON *inside* the building
> for connecting stations to the wiring closets rather than connecting
> the wiring closets back to campus IT central? Truly using it for the
> LAN and not the campus WAN?
>
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
>
>
>
>
> --
> William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
> Dirtside Systems . Web: 
>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Owen DeLong]

> On Dec 11, 2018, at 10:01 , Ben Cannon  wrote:
> 
> Sure but I can fit quite a lot of fiber in very little space. eg an 864 is 
> approx 1” dia.
> 
> Fan-outs can be done each floor, etc.  And a single single mode strand has 
> prodigious bandwidth available with the right optics.
> 
> Bonus: if you did this 30 years ago, you’re still good.  Anything else 
> (remember FDDI grade Multi-mode?) is not future proof IMO.  Basic 9/125 
> Singlemode always will be.
> 
> In city wide deployments, a bit different, especially for eg residential 
> service at economical pricing.  GPON for sure has it’s place, I just don’t 
> personally feel it’s inside a building all else being equal.

I’d actually argue that even if you’re going to do GPON on a wide distribution, 
the economics these days make a pretty good case for future-proofing with 
home-run fiber and putting your splitters and GPON gear in the same location. 
The link budgets turn out to be identical regardless of how far upstream the 
splitter is and once you dig the trench, the cost of the fiber itself is 
relatively cheap.

Home run means you aren’t locked into the PON topology if something better 
comes along in the future. It also opens up the potential to support 
competition (which I realize may be considered a detractor by some).

Owen

> 
> - Ben Cannon, AS15206
> 
>> On Dec 11, 2018, at 9:24 AM, Jason Lixfeld  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 11, 2018, at 11:32 AM, Ben Cannon  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your 
>>> existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.
>> 
>> There’s only so much space in conduits, risers and ducts.  At some point, 
>> scale would press this up against physical infrastructure realities 
>> depending on how far the active gear at the head end is from the subscriber.
> 

Re: A few GPON questions...

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 7:44 AM Nick Bogle  wrote:
> local university [...] we hired a contractor to design a GPON LAN system for 
> a new building as a cost saving measure

Hi Nick,

Do I correctly understand that you're using GPON *inside* the building
for connecting stations to the wiring closets rather than connecting
the wiring closets back to campus IT central? Truly using it for the
LAN and not the campus WAN?

Regards,
Bill Herrin




-- 
William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
Dirtside Systems . Web: 

A few GPON questions...

[Brandon Martin]

On 12/11/18 1:07 PM, Baldur Norddahl wrote:
I am still waiting for one of the 10G PON variants to become available. 
We want to deliver 10G to customers as >1G is becoming common on CPE 
Wi-Fi routers. But doing it with WDM is too expensive and p2p uses more 
fiber than we have.


XGS-PON is available now from some vendors.  I know of at least one 
that's also already supporting NG-PON2 WDM-PON using the same cards and 
just different optics if you really want to go all the way to 52Gbps per 
PON (GPON + XGS-PON + 4xNG-PON2 lambdas).


OLT-side, the pricing I've seen is actually pretty decent at maybe 2-3x 
the price per port of GPON despite having ~5x the capacity.  ONT-side 
has a bit of an ouch factor at the moment (also 2-3x or more the price 
of a GPON ONT...), but if you've got someone who actually wants >1Gbps 
service and can charge accordingly, it's definitely out there.

--
Brandon Martin

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Baldur Norddahl]

tir. 11. dec. 2018 19.03 skrev Ben Cannon :

> Sure but I can fit quite a lot of fiber in very little space. eg an 864 is
> approx 1” dia.
>

Working with that much fiber is expensive. Too much work at each splice
point. Huge inflexible cables. Expensive machinery to blow the fiber.

Compare that to blowing a 24f cable of 4 mm into a 6 mm id and 10 mmu od
duct. You can carry 24 times 128 users on that. Much more than the 25 mm
monster cable running p2p.

On top of that the multiduct has 12 of the smaller 10 mm subducts. You can
blow additional cables as needed.

Granted I have only worked with outside plant delivering FTTH. But I don't
see why not for a campus.

Regards
Baldur

>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Anderson, Charles R]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 07:07:49PM +0100, Baldur Norddahl wrote:
> >
> >
> > And WDM gear if necessary...heck even passive CWDM if you have a riser
> > space issue.
> >
> 
> WDM is much more expensive than GPON.
> 
> I am still waiting for one of the 10G PON variants to become available. We
> want to deliver 10G to customers as >1G is becoming common on CPE Wi-Fi
> routers. But doing it with WDM is too expensive and p2p uses more fiber
> than we have.

Passive CWDM is cheap and supports 10gig.

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Baldur Norddahl]

>
>
> And WDM gear if necessary...heck even passive CWDM if you have a riser
> space issue.
>

WDM is much more expensive than GPON.

I am still waiting for one of the 10G PON variants to become available. We
want to deliver 10G to customers as >1G is becoming common on CPE Wi-Fi
routers. But doing it with WDM is too expensive and p2p uses more fiber
than we have.

Regards

Baldur

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Ben Cannon]

Sure but I can fit quite a lot of fiber in very little space. eg an 864 is 
approx 1” dia.

Fan-outs can be done each floor, etc.  And a single single mode strand has 
prodigious bandwidth available with the right optics.

Bonus: if you did this 30 years ago, you’re still good.  Anything else 
(remember FDDI grade Multi-mode?) is not future proof IMO.  Basic 9/125 
Singlemode always will be.

In city wide deployments, a bit different, especially for eg residential 
service at economical pricing.  GPON for sure has it’s place, I just don’t 
personally feel it’s inside a building all else being equal.

- Ben Cannon, AS15206

> On Dec 11, 2018, at 9:24 AM, Jason Lixfeld  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 11, 2018, at 11:32 AM, Ben Cannon  wrote:
>> 
>> Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your 
>> existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.
> 
> There’s only so much space in conduits, risers and ducts.  At some point, 
> scale would press this up against physical infrastructure realities depending 
> on how far the active gear at the head end is from the subscriber.

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Anderson, Charles R]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 05:36:47PM +, Aled Morris via NANOG wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 at 17:30, Jason Lixfeld  wrote:
> > There’s only so much space in conduits, risers and ducts.  At some point, 
> > scale would press this up against physical infrastructure realities 
> > depending on how far the active gear at the head end is from the subscriber.
> 
> A point made earlier was that typically in a campus environment, most
> every riser cupboard has access to power so you can easily build a
> regular Ethernet LAN with a switch on every floor/corridor/hub.
> Basically, everywhere that you'd put a GPON splitter.

And WDM gear if necessary...heck even passive CWDM if you have a riser space 
issue.

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Aled Morris via NANOG]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 at 17:30, Jason Lixfeld  wrote:
> There’s only so much space in conduits, risers and ducts.  At some point, 
> scale would press this up against physical infrastructure realities depending 
> on how far the active gear at the head end is from the subscriber.

A point made earlier was that typically in a campus environment, most
every riser cupboard has access to power so you can easily build a
regular Ethernet LAN with a switch on every floor/corridor/hub.
Basically, everywhere that you'd put a GPON splitter.

Aled

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Jason Lixfeld]

> On Dec 11, 2018, at 11:32 AM, Ben Cannon  wrote:
> 
> Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your 
> existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.

There’s only so much space in conduits, risers and ducts.  At some point, scale 
would press this up against physical infrastructure realities depending on how 
far the active gear at the head end is from the subscriber.

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Baldur Norddahl]

Hello

We run a small FTTH internet service provider using Zhone MXK198 switches.
This is an older discontinued platform and since Zhone and Dasan merged,
there might be nothing but the name in common with your equipment. Anyway,
ours are stable and in five years on about 15 switches, we only have had
one crash. Fixed after a power cycle.

This is however the kind of equipment that you only run tested and verified
setup on. Lots of stuff does not work quite as it should, but when you find
a good configuration and stay with that, it is good. There are some strange
things, like vlan 7 being reserved and unusable.

When used with fs.com GPON sfp modules, it will work if the port has had a
genuine Zhone sfp installed previously. However after a reboot it will
reject the module. You then need to shift your genuine module through all
the ports to activate them.

The switch will reject other brands of ONU/ONT. Contrary to what they tell
you, this is not because of lacking standards. There is a secret setting
(which I don't have) that will make it accept third party ONU. Likewise if
the ONU is programmed with the Zhone vendor code, it will be accepted.

We are currently looking at cheaper options that do not come with vendor
locks for SFP and ONU.

Regards

Baldur


tir. 11. dec. 2018 16.45 skrev Nick Bogle :

> Hello fellow NANOG members :)
>
> Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network
> Engineer for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment
> from phones to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a
> contractor to design a GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving
> measure (though I am not sure how successful that was).
>
> Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we
> have gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability
> to manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of
> our equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are
> currently using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream
> ONT models (all Zhone).
>
> -We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the
> linecards to add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are
> too high). Does anyone have experience with 3rd party
> vendors/compatibility/stability issues? We were told they theoretically
> should work and just throw a log event, but it hasn't been tested. If so,
> what vendors would you recommend? So far all we've really seen are Ubiquiti
> and Fiberstore optics.
>
> -As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and
> ONT vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say,
> Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different
> model OLT? I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia
> OLT's but it's technically not supported.
>
> -We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced
> 1 line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were
> a pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed
> internal policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to
> customers. Does anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and
> their overall stability of components?
>
> - Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a
> corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service
> provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.
>
> Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you
> don't want on the list.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick Bogle
> n...@bogle.se
>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Brandon Martin]

On 12/6/18 10:18 PM, Nick Bogle wrote:


-We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the 
linecards to add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party 
are too high). Does anyone have experience with 3rd party 
vendors/compatibility/stability issues? We were told they theoretically 
should work and just throw a log event, but it hasn't been tested. If 
so, what vendors would you recommend? So far all we've really seen are 
Ubiquiti and Fiberstore optics.


I mean, it'll probably work, but considering the extra requirements 
placed on PON optics and the relatively low cost of them compared to the 
rest of the system, I'd be inclined to stick with either ones sold by 
your vendor or at least buying something they re-label from an 
authorized distributor of the OEM.




-As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT 
and ONT vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience 
using say, Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a 
different model OLT? I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to 
work with Nokia OLT's but it's technically not supported.


Yeah, good luck with that.  There's some limited degree of 
interoperability, but you'll often lose management features, at minimum. 
 Some GPON OLT vendors do have a limited list of "qualified" 3rd party 
ONTs that they maintain for when their 1st-party ones don't fit the 
bill.  Stick to 1st-party when you can and drop to "qualified" 3rd party 
ones if you absolutely have to.  Anything else is going to be a support 
and maintenance nightmare.




-We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have 
replaced 1 line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just 
because we were a pretty early adopter of this line and that they've 
fixed it and fixed internal policies to add additional QA and testing 
before shipping to customers. Does anyone have any experience with 
working with Zhone and their overall stability of components?


Um, GPON is well established in the field.  If you've got stability 
issues, letting your vendor blame it on being an "early adopter" is 
total BS.  Now if you were deploying NG-PON2 or something, I'd maybe, 
MAYBE let it slide as long as they gave me a good support contact.




- Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in 
a corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty 
service provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.


No idea why people think it's a good idea for corporate deployments. 
The whole point of a PON is that you don't have to have active elements 
in the field.  That's usually of little consequence in a corporate or 
even academic campus environment.  I'd just stick to active-E.

--
Brandon Martin

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Alfie Pates]

The first question to ask yourself is: Why does this need to be GPON? 

The primary advantage of GPON is that it's *passive* (on the
distribution side, at least) - this makes it ideal for building networks
where most of your infrastructure located in places that getting power
is infeasible: for instance, common residential fibre networks where
most of your infrastructure lives on unpowered poles or in
ducts/chambers.
I have not yet come across a network closet which doesn't have
provisions for power: If this is a small-to-medium sized campus network
you'd be better served by running ordinary optical ethernet and dropping
switches where you need to aggregate capacity.
GPON is a rabbit hole that you do not want to go down, if you can
feasibly avoid it: Ordinary ethernet is simply easier.
~a

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Matthew Crocker]

This,

Rip it out

Sorry this isn’t what you want to hear.3rd party optics *may* work but when 
they don’t Zhone support will not help you.

I recommend Zhone to my competitors.



From: NANOG  on behalf of Ben Cannon 
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 11:33 AM
To: Nick Bogle 
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" 
Subject: Re: A few GPON questions...

Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your 
existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.
-Ben. AS15206

On Dec 6, 2018, at 7:18 PM, Nick Bogle mailto:n...@bogle.se>> 
wrote:
Hello fellow NANOG members :)

Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network Engineer 
for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment from phones 
to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a contractor to design a 
GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving measure (though I am not 
sure how successful that was).

Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we have 
gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability to 
manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of our 
equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are currently 
using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream ONT models (all 
Zhone).

-We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the linecards to 
add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are too high). Does 
anyone have experience with 3rd party vendors/compatibility/stability issues? 
We were told they theoretically should work and just throw a log event, but it 
hasn't been tested. If so, what vendors would you recommend? So far all we've 
really seen are Ubiquiti and Fiberstore optics.

-As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and ONT 
vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say, Zhone 
ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT? 
I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia OLT's but it's 
technically not supported.

-We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced 1 
line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were a 
pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed internal 
policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to customers. Does 
anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and their overall stability 
of components?

- Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a 
corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service 
provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.

Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you don't 
want on the list.

Thanks,

Nick Bogle
n...@bogle.se<mailto:n...@bogle.se>

Re: A few GPON questions...

[Ben Cannon]

Rip it out and run 9/125 SMF fiber home runs. Use BiDi SFPs to re-use your 
existing (likely SMF thankfully) cable plant.  My opinion.

-Ben. AS15206

> On Dec 6, 2018, at 7:18 PM, Nick Bogle  wrote:
> 
> Hello fellow NANOG members :)
> 
> Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network 
> Engineer for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment 
> from phones to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a 
> contractor to design a GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving 
> measure (though I am not sure how successful that was). 
> 
> Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we have 
> gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability to 
> manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of our 
> equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are currently 
> using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream ONT models 
> (all Zhone).
> 
> -We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the linecards 
> to add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are too high). 
> Does anyone have experience with 3rd party vendors/compatibility/stability 
> issues? We were told they theoretically should work and just throw a log 
> event, but it hasn't been tested. If so, what vendors would you recommend? So 
> far all we've really seen are Ubiquiti and Fiberstore optics. 
> 
> -As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and ONT 
> vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say, Zhone 
> ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT? 
> I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia OLT's but 
> it's technically not supported. 
> 
> -We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced 1 
> line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were a 
> pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed 
> internal policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to 
> customers. Does anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and their 
> overall stability of components? 
> 
> - Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a 
> corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service 
> provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.  
> 
> Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you don't 
> want on the list. 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Nick Bogle
> n...@bogle.se

RE: A few GPON questions...

[Chris Gross]

How to deploy with Zhone is to put it in the garbage. I have more than enough 
horror stories from the provider side of things and enough of their TAC 
literally screaming at me because I called out of regular hours how my problems 
are physical fiber issues when it never is. They’ve also caused an 18 hour 
outage “Just trying to do some quick database cleanup” which worked, if you 
count wiping it as cleaning. Their GUI for ZMS is awful and their TAC doesn’t 
even know how to use it. It’s effectively a dead product. Their #1 issue has 
always been their support but nothing ever seems to improve and I saw a lot of 
support managers keep rotating in and out while their actual engineers ever 
changed back when I paid attention.

From: NANOG  On Behalf Of Nick Bogle
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2018 10:19 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: A few GPON questions...

Hello fellow NANOG members :)

Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network Engineer 
for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment from phones 
to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a contractor to design a 
GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving measure (though I am not 
sure how successful that was).

Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we have 
gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability to 
manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of our 
equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are currently 
using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream ONT models (all 
Zhone).

-We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the linecards to 
add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are too high). Does 
anyone have experience with 3rd party vendors/compatibility/stability issues? 
We were told they theoretically should work and just throw a log event, but it 
hasn't been tested. If so, what vendors would you recommend? So far all we've 
really seen are Ubiquiti and Fiberstore optics.

-As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and ONT 
vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say, Zhone 
ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT? 
I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia OLT's but it's 
technically not supported.

-We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced 1 
line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were a 
pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed internal 
policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to customers. Does 
anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and their overall stability 
of components?

- Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a 
corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service 
provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.

Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you don't 
want on the list.

Thanks,

Nick Bogle
n...@bogle.se<mailto:n...@bogle.se>

A few GPON questions...

[Nick Bogle]

Hello fellow NANOG members :)

Let me start with a little bit of background, my day job is a Network
Engineer for a local university where we have primarily a Cisco environment
from phones to switching to routing, etc. Before my time, we hired a
contractor to design a GPON LAN system for a new building as a cost saving
measure (though I am not sure how successful that was).

Either way, the contractor is about to hand the system off to us, and we
have gone through the training and such, and I feel confident in my ability
to manage the system, but we have a few questions that the manufacturer of
our equipment and our contractor didn't really want to answer. We are
currently using a Dasan Zhone MXK-F1419 with several different downstream
ONT models (all Zhone).

-We would like to consider use of 3rd party GPON B+ Optics on the linecards
to add redundancy to the splitter (as the cost of 1st party are too high).
Does anyone have experience with 3rd party vendors/compatibility/stability
issues? We were told they theoretically should work and just throw a log
event, but it hasn't been tested. If so, what vendors would you recommend?
So far all we've really seen are Ubiquiti and Fiberstore optics.

-As GPON is a standard itself, I'm aware interoperability between OLT and
ONT vendors is heavily limited.. Does anyone have any experience using say,
Zhone ONT's with a different model OLT, or Zhone ONT's with a different
model OLT? I've heard word that Zhone ONT's may be able to work with Nokia
OLT's but it's technically not supported.

-We've already experienced some pretty big stability issues (have replaced
1 line card 5 times..), our contractor is saying it's just because we were
a pretty early adopter of this line and that they've fixed it and fixed
internal policies to add additional QA and testing before shipping to
customers. Does anyone have any experience with working with Zhone and
their overall stability of components?

- Any other thoughts/gotchas/advice for deploying a GPON environment in a
corporate LAN? (or about deploying a Zhone solution) It's pretty service
provider oriented, and is incredible noticeable in the CLI.

Feel free to contact me offlist if you have any pertinent info that you
don't want on the list.

Thanks,

Nick Bogle
n...@bogle.se